The French politics of retrenchment (2007–2012): Institutions and blame avoidancestrategies

Philippe BezesCentre d’E´tudes et de Recherches de Sciences Administratives et Politiques (CERSA), France

Patrick Le Lidec Sciences Po, France

AbstractWhile the semi-presidential French regime and the reinforcement of ‘presidentializa-tion’ under Nicolas Sarkozy have often been associated with the idea of disruptive and heroic changes, France’s post-crisis budgetary policy appeared strongly embedded in the previous commitments made by President Sarkozy and relied largely on measures of a gradual and low-profile nature without significant U-turns. In order to explain this result, the article emphasizes the effects of French institutions on government capabilities and on the potential allocation of blame and the related political strategies connected with the electoral cycle and timing. In addition, it also explores the specific characteristics of the French national crisis and its perceptions by top bureaucrats, as well as the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced French budgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizations or the European Union.

Points for practitioners

This article emphasizes the importance of institutions and political strategies in cutback management. The main argument is that budget reduction policies are embedded in pol-itical and electoral constraints that strongly affect their design and choices. The article provides many empirical elements about the specific characteristics of the French national crisis and how French governments reacted to the 2008 crisis. It puts emphasis on the specificities of French political institutions and the strong exposure to blame. The French political strategies of blame avoidance are described between 2008 and 2012, as well as the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced French

budgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizations or the European Union.

KeywordsBlame avoidance, fiscal adjustment, fiscal policy instruments, France, retrenchment, semi-presidential regime

Introduction

Over the last decades, democracies have found themselves in a dilemma. On thespending side, past commitments take up an ever-growing proportion of bud-gets, generating strong inheritance or legacy effects (Pierson, 2001). This freezingof historical patterns of government spending leads to ‘fiscal sclerosis’, combinedwith a decline in fiscal democracy characterized by two phenomena (Streeck andMertens, 2013: 27): the level of mandatory spending increases to the detrimentof discretionary spending; and ‘state activities are increasingly less responsive tochanging interests among the citizenry’ (Streeck and Mertens, 2013: 27).Moreover, growing fiscal competition between countries results in a freezingof revenues, and the constant rise in debt that ensues impacts negatively onthe legitimacy of governments. The 2008 financial crisis took place within thiscontext and exacerbated the problems because it required governments to findleeway to stimulate their economies, while, at the same time, further reducingrevenues, thereby making more cuts necessary at the risk of triggering a reces-sionary spiral.

From this perspective, a detailed study of the French response to the 2008 crisisis interesting, for two reasons. The first is that the French budget is specificallyrigidified. The crisis occurred against a background of 40 years of deterioration inthe public finances, with several factors explaining the increasing rigidity of thebudget: civil service salaries; operational expenses and welfare spending; andthe increasing proportion of the budget allocated to debt servicing. This has ledto a ‘great petrification’ (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Sine, 2006). National debt greweighteenfold between 1978 and 2007, while it rose as a proportion of gross domesticproduct (GDP) from 21.1% in 1978 to 40% in 1992, reaching 64% in December2007 (Champsaur and Cotis, 2010). In addition, since the early 2000s, tougher fiscalcompetition prompted governments to reduce tax rates, reductions assessed at4.3% of GDP between 2000 and mid-2012 (Cac, 2014). All this hints at the power-ful vested interests behind public spending in France, which have managed toobtain benefits from tax policies (specifically from tax loopholes), while othergroups find themselves dealing with a state that is increasingly less responsiveto their interests. This growing difficulty in meeting new demands has made itincreasingly hard for politicians to satisfy their electoral clienteles: since 1978,France has experienced a continuous cycle of political swings at each general elec-tion, with only one exception in 2007 (when Sarkozy managed to mark himself out

from his predecessor, despite being of the same party, by campaigning on the themeof a clean break).

The second reason why the French case makes an interesting study is that thesemi-presidential regime established under the Fifth Republic is generally seen asone with a strong executive. Leaders are seen to have extensive decision-makingcapacity, arising from the exceptional legitimacy conferred by the election of thepresident by direct universal suffrage and from instruments of rationalizedparliamentarianism that supposedly allow him to impose his will on Parliament.Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory stood out in two ways: it was incontestable and gave thepresident a very strong mandate to govern (he was elected by a wide majority of53% of votes, with very high voter turnout (83.97%)); and it was accompanied byradical reforming rhetoric and a liberal platform.

These two elements result in a paradox. While the French regime and thereinforcement of ‘presidentialization’ under Sarkozy have been associated withthe idea of disruptive and ‘heroic’ changes, France’s post-crisis budgetary policyappeared strongly embedded in the frozen historical patterns of governmentspending, but also in the initial commitments made by Sarkozy vis-a-vis his clien-teles immediately following his election in 2007. The purpose of this article is toexplain why French responses to the financial crisis have not opened a window ofopportunity for setting fundamentally new priorities and sustainable long-termsolutions that would alter existing policies and change the distribution of benefitsbetween interest groups. In explaining the formulation of France’s post-2008 policyof retrenchment, we will draw on theories that analyse the politics of retrenchmentin welfare states (Pierson, 1994) and fiscal consolidation by showing how institu-tions, blame-avoidance factors (Hood, 2002; Weaver, 1986) and the electoral cycleand timing play an important role in framing the rationales of political leaders.These political rationales will be balanced by the national characteristics of thecrisis and the way in which it is perceived by politicians and senior bureaucrats, aswell as by the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced Frenchbudgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizationsor the European Union (EU) (Kickert, 2012).

We will first develop our theoretical framework by describing the characteristicsof France’s institutions and their influence on blame-avoidance strategies. We willthen provide a detailed characterization of the 2008 fiscal crisis in France and theresulting fiscal policy by dividing the years 2007–2012 into four periods. In the lastsection, we will address the interwoven factors (economic, political, external) thatmay explain the governance of France’s fiscal crisis, with a particular focus on theimportance of the political dimension.

Our exploration of France’s politics of retrenchment over the years 2007–2012draws on several sources. We began by building a comprehensive chronology of themany fiscal and taxation measures adopted by the Fillon government from 2007 to2012. From public documents produced during the process and from press releases,we systematically analysed these measures in the light of our theoretical frame-work. We also conducted several in-depth taped interviews with individuals from

the various executive and ministerial organizations engaged in these policies(presidency, prime minister, Budget Directorate, Treasury Directorate, StateModernizing Unit).

Our theoretical argument: Blame avoidance, interest groupsand retrenchment

How did the French government react to the 2008 crisis and how were both therecovery programme and the politics of retrenchment constructed following thecrisis? Our argument is that fiscal responses were shaped not so much by the questfor a ‘viable’ and ‘correct’ economic and budgetary diagnosis of the crisis, or by theaim of adopting drastic remedies, but, above all, by political strategiesgeared towards electoral constraints, interest groups and constituencies, andblame-avoidance objectives. We suggest that France’s institutions are particularlyconducive to such outcomes.

France’s semi-presidential regime, the management of the public financesand blame avoidance: A two-edged sword

France’s Fifth Republic, often referred to as a semi-presidential regime (Duverger,1980; Elgie, 1999), has traditionally been seen as characterized by a set of institu-tions that provide strong decision-making capacities. Although the Constitution of4 October 1958 established a parliamentary system, both institutional practice andconstitutional reforms have increasingly reinforced the president’s pre-eminenceover the prime minister, with the president being elected by popular vote and theChambers enjoying only limited legislative powers (Brouard et al., 2009; Elgie,2013). The constitutional reform of 2000 reinforced the presidentialization of theregime by bringing the presidential and parliamentary terms into alignment andthus reducing the probability of a government split (‘cohabitation’) between apresident and prime minister from opposite parties. Nicolas Sarkozy accentuatedthis ‘presidentialization’, which earned him the sobriquet of ‘hyper-president’. Hewas a clear election winner, standing on the platform of a break with the welfarestate model of the past and a commitment to more liberal and business-friendlypolicies, along with tax cuts.

As widely acknowledged in the comparative literature on budget policies(Schick, 1991; Wildavsky, 1975), formal institutions do play a role in the formu-lation of retrenchment policies. In the French case, a dominant view has been thatit is easy to legislate for reform and to act on fiscal matters under France’sFifth Republic system because of the power it grants to the executive. As aresult, ministers in the Finance and Budget Ministries, as well as top bureaucratsin the Treasury and Budget Division, have played a central role in the core execu-tive through their command of financial coordination (Hayward and Wright, 2002:164–187). Moreover, France’s semi-presidential regime has often been associatedwith the concentration of power, strong administrative capacities – with top

bureaucrats protecting the ‘general interest’ – and ‘heroic politics’ (Francois, 1998).We suggest that this view is misleading, at least for the policies of retrenchmentaffecting the many constituencies and interest groups attached to welfare state, andeconomic and business policies. As advanced by Pierson (1994: 70), ‘the theoreticalcase for expecting centralized systems to be more successful is suspect’ since ‘thegreater centralization of political institutions is a two-edged sword: centralizedgovernment concentrates power but it concentrates accountability . . . the greaterinstitutional control must be weighed against the greater likelihood that it would beblamed for unwanted reforms’. The reduction of the presidential term to fiveyears has further increased the president’s exposure to blame. As the literatureon welfare state retrenchment suggests (Starke, 2006), when determining ‘govern-mental capacity for loss imposition’ (Pal and Weaver, 2003: 294), the ‘concentra-tion of power effects’ must be empirically weighed against the ‘concentration ofaccountability effect’. The more institutional or partisan control over governmentpolicy becomes unified, the easier it gets for individuals to make judgements ofpolitical responsibility. Political institutions with a high concentration of powerwill also concentrate blame, while fragmented systems will have greater potential to‘share’ or ‘shift the blame’ but also to build coalitions. In the French context, thelikelihood of the president being blamed is high for two primary reasons.

First, the fact that the president is directly elected makes him/her an electorallypowerful figure for the majority since ‘members of the legislature will not cross thepresident because the president is the most valuable vote getter that political partiespossess’ (Huber, 1996: 30). This mechanism has been further reinforced with theconstitutional reform of 2000 and the primacy of the presidential elections, whichstrengthen the perception that the president is the person really in charge.

Second, while power largely proceeds from the president and his/her election,the president is not accountable to Parliament whereas, by contrast, the govern-ment is accountable both to Parliament and to the president. This means that thegovernment and prime minister are primarily subordinate to the president, andmay be used as potential scapegoats (Grossman, 2009: 44).

This concentration of political power increases political accountability andimplies a high risk of political loss in implementing a policy of retrenchment(Hood, 2002; Pierson, 1994; Weaver, 1986). In the absence of mechanisms ofcollective responsibility (like those found in parliamentary regimes and in coalitiongovernments), the political cost of large-scale reforms is particularly high: minorityparties that have no share in power are encouraged to take up populist oppositionstrategies designed to win them the next elections, in a constant seesaw process.Opposing the reforms introduced by the government in place is a passport to powerat the next election, though at the risk of sparking rapid disenchantment. In add-ition, it prompts politicians to be particularly watchful of their electoral support, tofavour incremental reforms (Pisani-Ferry, 2014), to pay particular attention tointerest groups potentially affected by cutbacks and to protect their political con-stituencies from policies of retrenchment. With this perspective in mind, we explorethe idea that retrenchment policies depend largely on their ‘political viability’

(Hall, 1989: 374–375), that is, the political and electoral implications of economicor budgetary solutions and cutbacks. The consequence of the strength of the pol-itical executive in France is therefore more to allow the president to make choicesbased on political considerations than to impose drastic reforms.

Perceptions and anticipations of the nature of the crisis and of ‘external’constraints

Two further points need to be made in characterizing the political and administra-tive reasoning at work. The choice of solutions for resolving the crisis and theanticipation of the associated risks of credit and blame depend, on the one hand,on the perception of the nature and intensity of the economic crisis and, on theother hand, on the perception of the constraints weighing on the state in question.These dimensions give a large role to key senior civil servants serving in the BudgetDirectorate, in the Treasury Department and in the president’s and primeminister’s cabinets. Of course, their interpretations and solutions may be filteredand selected by politicians and will depend on the institutional relationship betweenpoliticians and bureaucrats.

As suggested by many authors (Blyth, 2002: 10; Hall, 1989), the interests at stakein a crisis and the interpretations of that crisis are far from unambiguous. Severalscholars emphasize the role played by ideational legacies or economic traditions,such as ‘statist liberalism’ (Vail, 2014) or, for the French case, ‘post-dirigisme’(Clift, 2012b), in the framing of economic and budgetary responses to crises.Our approach is slightly different because the mechanisms through which theseintellectual frameworks operate often remain insufficiently precise: these supposedlegacies correspond to national stereotypes (the strength of Keynesianism inFrance) of questionable validity, and are contradicted by other studies that empha-size the presence of a neoliberal trend in French affairs. Following Starke’s (2006:113) suggestions, we prefer not to presuppose the existence of frameworks but toshow how budgetary choices were politically, administratively and economicallyconstructed and how the actors involved understood the crisis and its variousdimensions. We thus focus on bounded rationalities and the way in which theyhave been constructed (Cox, 2001), a mix of economic diagnoses, budgetary con-straints and political strategies.

The second important constraint affecting government decisions is the percep-tions of the constraints – wrongly called ‘external’ – that characterize the inter-dependencies within which Eurozone economies and states are required to operate,as well as the expectation of potential leeway in tackling these constraints. In thecase of the 2008 crisis, the constraints are obviously linked with the new Europeantreaties (Clift and Ryner, 2014: 141–143). Beyond the very high exposure of Frenchbanks to risks from the Southern European countries, which constitute a furtherincentive for France to argue for a strengthening of solidarity mechanisms, it is theintegration of the European economies that leads to the perception of the situationas one of ‘systemic risk’, which makes it acceptable for French leaders to surrender

sovereignty to a degree that they would consider inconceivable in other circum-stances. Leaders’ perceptions of the attitude of the financial markets are also crucialbecause – at certain moments – the solutions they choose constitute, above all,signals for the markets. This concern for market credibility has been central andencompasses issues like the perception of France’s reputation and the confidence offinancial markets, trends in borrowing costs, or the maintenance of the country’sAAA credit rating by the bond-rating agencies (Clift, 2013).

Tensions and contradictions in France’s fiscal consolidationpolicy: When budget constraints meet politics

When examining how the French government responded to the fiscal crisis, it isimportant to consider a longer period, beginning in May 2007. Budgetary policyand cutbacks are constrained by factors inherited from previous political commit-ments and fiscal and tax policies (Schick, 1991). Since all decisions took placeduring Sarkozy’s presidential term, the ‘politics of cutback budgeting’ were severelyconstrained by the electoral agenda. Emphasizing the strength of blame-avoidancefactors, but also the bounded structure of decisions on budgetary and economicchoices by French senior officials, we have divided the process into four sequences:the initial decisions of 2007; the 2008 crisis; and two successive responses betweenlate 2008 and 2010.

Before the crisis: An ambivalent balance between spending cuts and tax cuts(May 2007–September 2008)

In France, the crisis occurred more than a year after the new presidency hadlaunched its new policies. Hence, the idea of spending reviews and cutbacks wasnot a reaction to the 2008 crisis, but was formulated in the mid-2000s, introduced inNicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 electoral platform and implemented soon after his election.The initial choices were based on the beliefs, founded on the Camdessus (2004) andPebereau (2005) reports and supported by the president’s entourage, that the dir-ection of France’s public spending was not sustainable. The 2008 crisis occurredmore than a year after the initial decisions. Several of the devices employed after the2008 and 2010 crises were conceived before then and were reinforced rather thanundermined by those events. However, austerity was far from the sole factor in theformulation of the government’s budget and economic policy from 2007. Large taxcuts were offered to reward the winning candidate’s backers (the rich) and to sup-port interest groups. The initial policy mix was, then, ambiguous and paradoxical.

On the one hand, in July 2007, the president and his team had launched aGeneral Public Policy Review (RGPP). During his campaign, Sarkozy had advo-cated a global financial plan dominated by cuts in public expenditure, while pro-mising a reduction in the tax burden. Ministries were thus asked to schedulespending reductions but also to reshape their own roles and to consider alternativestrategies for delivering their public policies (Bezes, 2010). Organizational decisions

focused predominantly on: abolishing departments; eradicating overlaps; increas-ing government efficiency through eliminations, simplifications, mergers, lean man-agement, synergies, automation, better management and better command andcontrol intended to generate budget savings; achieve cutbacks; and enhance prod-uctivity and efficiency.

The Fillon government had also strengthened budgetary dominance by creatingan enlarged Ministry for Budgeting, Public Accounts and the Civil Service toenforce a systematic control of central and local governments, as well as onsocial security. The RGPP included initiatives to restrict state expenditure. First,the 2008 Budget Bill capped state spending increases to no more than projectedinflation (‘zero volume’) for the entire mandate through to 2012. A second import-ant measure was a restructuring process to reduce the number of civil servants,achieved by the non-replacement of one in two retiring state employees. The 2008Finance Bill set a target of eliminating the equivalent of 22,800 full-time civil ser-vice posts (see Figure 1).1 In order to push through this policy of non-replacement,the Fillon government undertook to allocate 50% of the resulting savings to theremaining staff in the form of ‘wage compensation’ intended to offset the negativeeffects of the reforms. According to the Budget Directorate, the total amountfinally saved through the RGPP between 2007 and 2012 was E11.9 billion (IGAet al., 2012), of which E3.6 billion came from the reduction in personnel costs.

During this pre-crisis period, one final initiative came onto the agenda: a multi-annual public finance policy underpinned by a multiannual budget based on the

13.7

17.220.0

6.65.0 5.4

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10.0

-1.0

-4.5

-7.4-10.0

0.0

-9.9-11.2

-20.0

-22.9

-30.6

-30.0

30.6

-33.7-31.6

-33.0 33.1

-40.0

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 PLF 2011 2012 2013

Budgetary jobs full-�me equivalent jobs

(prog) (prog)

Figure 1. Public staff reduction in France in the 2000s.

Source: Direction generale du Tresor (2010).

RGPP. Inspired by the Budget Directorate, the multiannual public finance policyreceived constitutional ratification through the revision passed by Parliament on 21July 2008. The first multiannual budget set the financial course for all civil servicedepartments (central government, social security and local authorities) for theperiod 2009–2012, along with the principles of governance required to steer thiscourse.

On the other hand, measures taken in July 2007 also reveal a political paybackagenda running counter to the objective of restoring the sustainability of the publicfinances. The cost of the French fiscal package of 2007, called the loi TEPA, wasassessed in 2008 at E9 billion. First, the loi TEPA included an exemption fromincome tax and payroll taxes on overtime. Second, it contained a number of meas-ures that benefited the right-wing electorate. ‘Inheritance tax’ was eliminated for95% of direct inheritance, and donations to children and grandchildren wereencouraged by tax exemptions. In addition, total income tax and local propertytaxes assessed on the main residence, as well as wealth taxes and corporate sur-taxes, had already been limited by the application of the ‘bouclier fiscal’, or taxshield, which limited the maximum amount of tax payable on income to 50%.Moreover, up to E50,000 invested in equity for small and medium enterpriseswas made deductible from the so-called solidarity wealth tax (ISF). Tax relief onthe main residence in the calculation of ISF was increased to 30%. These election-driven decisions drew criticism from top bureaucrats in the Budget Ministry andTreasury Department, who saw that they would contribute significantly to deficitand debt levels in circumstances where a number of worrying signals from the USwere already pointing to a deterioration in economic conditions. Indeed, themacroeconomic background provided in the 2008 finance White Paper, presentedby the Treasury Department on 26 September 2007, drew immediate attention tofour major risks in the US: the sharp fall in residential investment in the US; thesudden increase in mortgage defaults; the rise in stock market volatility; and theabrupt drop in global demand and trade. The negative impact of these risks onFrance’s situation was mentioned: escalating tensions in the credit markets, affect-ing global economic activity; tighter financing conditions; the collapse of assetvalues; and a fall in investment and consumption. France would face a 0.5%drop in growth in 2008.

Even before the crisis, therefore, Sarkozy’s policy seems somewhat unbalancedand likely to exacerbate the debt, since the cost of the tax cuts introduced by theloi TEPA was far from covered by the spending decisions taken under theRGPP review.

Enter the 2008 crisis in France: A parenthesis of stimulus

The financial crisis began 15 months after Nicolas Sarkozy’s election. From 2008,the total government deficit increased rapidly, reaching 7.5% of GDP in 2009. Thecrisis ended the country’s ability to contain the rise in public debt, which hadstabilized over the period 2004–2007 (at 64% of GDP), a stability at least partially

attributable to creative accounting. Public debt rose by 22 percentage points overthe period in question (2007–2011), that is, five times faster than over the previous15 years (Champsaur and Cotis, 2010; see also Table 1).

The crisis of 2008 caught the executive on the back foot. It embarked on a policyof budgetary expansion to absorb the shock caused by the collapse of LehmanBrothers. This ushered in an ambiguous and very short-lived period of stimulus,culminating in the international G20 summit in London in April 2009. Here, ourenquiry leads us to challenge the interpretation that the French response to thecrisis reflected the existence of state traditions of economic policy (the ‘statist lib-eral tradition’ (Vail, 2014) or ‘post-dirigisme’ (Clift, 2012b)) and the strength ofKeynesian ideas at the Ministry of Economics and Finance (Vail, 2014: 71).Instead, our investigation identifies a dividing line, within the executive itself,between partisans and adversaries of Keynesian stimulus policy, which resultedin the defeat of the former. While the president’s special adviser, Henri Guaino,advocated the need for a massive (E100 billion) stimulus plan, the main playersthen involved in economic and budgetary decision-making – whether the Elysee’sdeputy secretary-general responsible for economic policy, the head of the Treasury,the Budget director or different advisers to the president, prime minister and min-ister of economics and finance on economic and budgetary matters – shareduniform orthodox liberal views. With a background in the Treasury and Budgetdepartments, and, in some cases, a spell in the financial sector, they were highlycritical of France’s last Keynesian stimulus plan, dating from the early 1980s, at atime when the country’s economic competitiveness had been in decline since theearly 2000s.

The onset of the 2008 crisis did not greatly alter their view of the handicapsaffecting the French economy (a continuously declining trade balance2 anddeterioration in the public finances).3 These senior officials were critical of thedeliberately optimistic bias traditionally apparent in France’s growth forecasts,and of the interference of political considerations in the construction of growthprojections, resulting in systematic disparities between budget forecasts and

Table 1. Main budgetary and economic figures for France

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

GDP per capita (E) 28,400 29,600 30,100 29,200 29,900 30,600

Real GDP growth rate (%) 2.5 2.3 –0.1 –3.1 1.7 1.7

General government

deficit/surplus (% of GDP)

–2.3 –2.7 –3.3 –7.5 –7.1 –5.2

General government

gross debt (% of GDP)

63.7 64.2 68.2 79.2 82.3 85.8

Inflation (HICP) 1.9 1.6 3.2 0.1 1.7 2.3

Unemployment rate (ILO) 9.2 8.4 7.8 9.5 9.7 9.6

Source: Eurostat.

outcomes. They were (privately) critical of politicians, whom they saw as too con-cerned to avoid the blame inherent in consolidation policies. They were largely infavour of sharp cuts in expenditure on civil service personnel and on transfers, andvery mistrustful of a Keynesian doctrine seen as a constant game of catch-up,dictated by electoral strategies of ‘credit claiming’. These individuals tried to con-tain the temptation of a Keynesian response on the assumption that there could beno consumption-based national solution in a country that had accumulated arecord balance-of-trade deficit, which would be further exacerbated by a policyof reflation. A compromise between the need for stimulus and continued austerityled to the adoption of a policy of ‘Ri-lance’, to employ a term coined by Minister ofEconomics and Finance Christine Lagarde, a combination of two words –‘rigueur’(rigor) and ‘relance’ (stimulus) – referred to the ‘subtle’ mix of cutback measuresand stimulus policies.4

The new balance of power in response to the crisis: Framing the recoveryplan, course adjustments and sending signals to markets (September 2008–February 2010)

In response to the shock caused by the Lehman Brothers collapse and the interbankcrisis, France’s leaders drew up a recovery plan that was essentially national.However, it was repackaged as an element of a European recovery plan presentedat the G20 summit in London on 2 April 2009.

A recovery plan targeted more at investment than consumption: A patriotic strategy in support

of an uncompetitive economy. The recovery plan adopted by the French governmentsought, first, to respond to the need not to further undermine a domestic economicand budgetary situation seen as deeply compromised. By setting the level of thenational contribution at E26 billion, the government chose to position itself atprecisely 1.3% of GDP, the midpoint of the range set for Europe by the headsof state and government. If we take out the cash-flow measures, which were notincluded in the data for other countries, the French plan represented only some1.1% of GDP, placing it second from bottom of the major developed nations.

However, it differed from many recovery plans that sought to stimulate con-sumption. Indeed, as one of the players involved in the process explained: ‘regard-ing the stimulus, we pretended to be scraping 1.2% of GDP, and then we made acash advance, in other words we brought forward investments that were alreadyscheduled’. The French approach was characterized by the scale of the effort madeto boost corporate cash flows and public and private investment. Out of a totalinitial estimated amount of E26 billion: E11.6 billion were allocated to measures toimprove company cash flows, notably, through tax measures in the budget; E10.5billion were allocated to public investment, divided between the state (E4 billion),public companies (E4 billion) and local authorities (E2.5 billion), though this wasnot, strictly speaking, new or additional investment, merely a bringing forward ofpublic investment measures already scheduled for the subsequent years; and E2

billion were allocated to two sectors particularly exposed to the effects of the eco-nomic crisis – housing (support for local employment) and the car industry (withtargeted measures in favour of low-powered vehicles, a market dominated byFrench manufacturers). The cost of these exceptional investment measures wasoffset by the use of a national loan combined with a concomitant reduction inoperating expenses. These choices fit with an interpretation in terms of liberalpatriotism (Clift, 2012a) insofar as they reflect a desire to support key sectors ofthe French economy exposed to little or no international competition. Conversely,they demonstrate that – by contrast with the claim made by Vail (2014) – there wasno wish to implement a Keynesian policy of stimulus through consumption.

The challenge for the executive was to find a way to reconcile this temporarystimulus with the continuing goal of reducing structural spending, as contained inthe 2009–2011 multiannual programmes. The Budget Ministry’s objective was toensure that the exceptional investment drive did not deflect ministries from theirtargets for reducing growth in their operating expenses, and to prevent the counter-cyclical measures adopted from undermining the credibility of the strategy to bringabout sounder public finances and the new cognitive frame that the BudgetMinistry was seeking to impose. A special budget was created to fund this plan:it would ring-fence the exceptional allocations from ordinary government spend-ing, which should then be traceable throughout the whole implementation chain.The aim was to avoid these allocations continuing beyond the term of the recoveryplan. An ad hoc cross-cutting ‘Economic Recovery Plan’ was created by theCorrective Finance Bill of 4 February 2009, slated to finish at the end of financialyear 2010. Far as it was from Keynesian standards, the short-lived ‘Ri-lance’ par-enthesis closed quickly anyway with the onset of the sovereign debt crisis.

Consolidation measures taken in response to the crisis. By contrast, a first package ofmeasures to reduce the rate of growth in public spending was introduced with thepassing of the first Public Finance Planning Act in February 2009 (for the Period2009–2012). To slow the growth of public spending, a zero-volume rule (excludingthe recovery plan) for 2009, 2010 and 2011 was set for state expenditure, with theaim of extending it to the whole public sphere. The annual rate of increase inspending by the state, state operators and primary social security bodies wasrestricted to 1.1%. The maximum rate of increase in health care and social securityexpenses was set at 3.3%. With regard to local authorities, the government wasconstitutionally precluded from applying a spending cap. Faced with this consti-tutional obstacle, it applied a zero-volume rule to central government allocations tolocal authorities (which did not prevent them from offsetting the fall in state sup-port by increasing local taxes).

Sending signals to markets: Making working people pay for the recovery while sparing

pensioners. In addition, in circumstances marked by an anticipated increase in thepublic deficit and a growing risk of interest rate rises, the government chose to senda signal to the markets in order to give credibility to the president’s undertaking to

move expenditure trends in the right direction by announcing the decision toreform the pensions system, with the stated aim of balancing the pension booksby 2018.

The equilibrium on which the pension reform was based was very comparablewith that underpinning the recovery plan, with the principle of balancing counter-cyclical investment by planned cuts in operating expenses. The pension reform wasforecast to generate a gain of E16 billion in 2016 and to prevent a E49 billion rise indebt between 2012 and 2016. Nevertheless, it was seen by many observers as aconvenient short-run strategy to buy time. The strategic character of this reformwas particularly transparent in view of the government’s decision that the pensionreserve fund, which was supposed to be used only after 2020, would be graduallydepleted from 2011 in order to cushion the deficit in the system over the period ofimplementation, and because the whole plan was based on deliberately optimisticforecasts by the Conseil d’orientation des retraites (COR). The Cour des Comptes(2013) exposed the incapacity of the reform to meet the pension system’s fundingchallenges in the context of an ageing population. Despite the high level of Frenchpensions on international comparisons (OECD, 2013),5 the pension reform repre-sented a trade-off to the advantage of ageing and retired people (who voted mas-sively for Sarkozy), and to the detriment of young people and people in employment.

A systematic but low-profile policy of retrenchment under electoralconstraints (March 2010–May 2012)

This final period was characterized by an intensification in the tensions, not to saythe contradictions, between deteriorating economic conditions that seemed to callfor the adoption of drastic measures, and the move into the end phase of theelectoral cycle (in 2012), which conversely offered an incentive to defer their adop-tion to a post-election time frame. Four types of measures and strategies wereadopted over this period.

Holding down spending by applying a zero-value standard. The first measure was to adopta new Corrective Finance Bill for the period 2011–2014 and to introduce a new ruleinto the 2011 Budget Bill to stabilize all public expenditure at ‘zero value’, exclud-ing interest on debt and pension spending over the period 2011–2013. This so-called‘zero-value rule’ was a way to achieve the ‘zero real-terms expenditure’(‘zero volume’) target for the entire national budget. It enabled the governmentto counter the inevitable upward trend in these costs for that period, which would,in fact, have absorbed virtually all the slack that would have emerged if total publicspending grew in line with the expected rate of inflation (+1.5% in 2011;+1.75%in 2012/2013). Allowing for the steady growth in the cost of debt and pensions, theapplication of this strict principle meant reducing the state’s operating expenditureby 10% in three years, with a reduction of 5% in 2011, a target to be achievedessentially through the savings generated by the RGPP. One significant measureaffecting the civil service wage bill was a freeze on the point value of civil service

pay from 2010. The resulting net fall in the purchasing power of public servants(relative to inflation) came on top of the rise in their pension contributions dis-cussed earlier, and had the effect of making measures affecting civil servants theprimary variable used in adjusting the budget. All these actions reduced the annualrate of growth in the volume of public spending by an average of 0.8% over theperiod 2011–2013. Nonetheless, this overall target varied in its application betweenthe different components of the public sector.

Sharing the burden: Extending restraint to all public bodies. With the adoption of thethree-year budget for 2011–2013, spending cuts were extended to other publicbodies, such as agencies, where costs had continued to grow rapidly. To thisend, the government organized two ‘national deficit conferences’ on 28 Januaryand 20 May 2010, bringing together everyone involved in public spending.

A prime ministerial circular on 26 March 2010 also introduced strategic‘guidance’ for all ‘state operators’, for example, all public organizations at arm’slength from central administrations, including agencies, etablissements publics, uni-versities and so on. This strategic guidance process extended the Loi Organiquerelative aux Lois de Finances (LOLF) framework and entailed the introduction ofclear targets through performance contracts for each agency. The reform alsoimposed a 10% reduction in operating costs over a three-year period (2011–2013) and a reduction in personnel costs of 1.5% per year.

As regards social security, the application of the spending rule to health-careexpenditure (Objectif National de Depenses d’Assurance Maladie, ONDAM) wasintensified. The limit on national health-care spending, defined in terms of nominalgrowth rates, was reduced from 3.3% in 2010 to 2.8% for the years 2011 to 2014.6

Two types of targeted savings measures were introduced to slow the rate ofgrowth in local authority spending. The first was the application of a zero-valuerule to financial transfers from central government to local authorities for 2011–2013. The option of a sharp cut of several billion euros in central governmentallocations proposed to the president was postponed until after the 2012 presiden-tial elections. The second measure was the replacement of the business tax (the rateof which was set by local authorities) by a new tax on corporate added value(CVAE) (with a maximum national rate set by Parliament) in order to slowdown the rate of growth in local authority revenues (Le Lidec, 2011).

Increasing tax yields while avoiding the blame: Disguised increases and ‘virtuous taxes’. Withregard to decisions on the revenue side, the strategy was also to use low-profileinstruments (Bezes, 2007) and obfuscation strategies (Lindbom, 2007; Pierson,1994), mainly through disguised increases in certain taxes and numerous measuresto eliminate and rationalize fiscal spending. Due to electoral constraints, the patch-work of revenue measures was rather inconsistent, running counter to the statedgoal of clarifying and simplifying the French tax system. In response to the Courtof Accounts recommendation for a E10 billion cut in the total cost of fiscal expend-iture, matched by the same amount from corporate tax shelters from 2011 onwards

(Cour des comptes, 2010), the government applied a general cheese-paring strategyin these areas. The public finance planning bill for the period 2011–2014 providedfor a minimum yield of E11 billion in 2011, primarily relying on measures toincrease compulsory contributions and on the elimination of fiscal spending andcorporate tax shelters. The report appended to the finance White Paper for 2012provided for the elimination of E5.2 billion of tax shelters in 2011 followed by afurther reduction of E1.6 billion (Cour des comptes, 2012: 104). In itself, the tech-nique employed – prioritizing the elimination of tax shelters rather than increasingtax rates – reflects the efforts by the president to remain faithful, if not to the spiritof his programme, at least to the letter of his electoral undertakings, having pro-mised in 2007 not to increase tax rates.

Nonetheless, there were two kinds of exception to the faithfulness to the ‘no moretaxes’ rule. Beyond the low-profile measure of de-indexing the tax scale, whichautomatically increased contribution rates for taxpayers whose incomes hadgrown, another tactic was also employed to minimize the political cost of tax meas-ures. This consisted in a multiplicity of ‘micro-duties’, taxes characterized by theirindirectness, their low yield and their potentially positive impact on the regulation ofindividual behaviour (for instance, the increase in duties on fizzy drinks and beer),which minimized their electoral cost and the associated social backlash.

Headline tax and matching the fiscal timetable to the electoral cycle. A final series ofmeasures – tax hikes – were introduced during the last month of the mandate,with the aim of matching the fiscal timetable to the electoral cycle in order to rallythe French around a re-burnished image of the president. The first headline meas-ure was the creation of an ‘exceptional tax on very high earnings’, adopted in the2012 Finance Bill, which ran counter to the measures taken in favour of the well-offat the beginning of the presidency. Adopted against the background of the electoralcampaign, the measure was intended to be ‘reparatory’ and to erase the stigma (the‘president of the rich’) attached to Sarkozy’s initial tax policy (the loi TEPA andthe tax shield). The top income tax rate was increased by one point, capital gainstax on real estate by three points and tax on capital gains and dividends by onepoint. A third type of headline tax hike, the rise in value-added tax (VAT) rates,was also agreed under the 2012 Finance Bill. The desirability of its adoption hadbeen debated on numerous occasions, notably, between the two rounds of the 2007legislative elections, but rejected because of its political costs. Initially conceived asa revenue-neutral reform, intended to bring about a ‘fiscal devaluation’ through theshift from social contributions to VAT, it was resurrected in the form of a revenue-raising measure. The rise in the standard rate of VAT from 19.6% to 21.2% andthe two point hike in social contributions on financial earnings from 13.5% to15.5% were expected to generate more than E13 billion in revenue and to offsetan equivalent reduction in the level of employers’ contributions, a measure intro-duced to stimulate employment.

Ultimately, since the presidential elections were to be held in May 2012, theintroduction of the VAT increase was deferred to 1 October 2012 and the hike in

income-related tax contribution (CSG) to 1 July 2012. The timing of the adoptionof these measures (approved in the first Amended Finance Bill for 2012 on 14March 2012)7 was intended to enable the president to reap the political rewardsfrom them without immediately having to bear the cost.

The consolidation strategy under multiple influences: Theimportance of blame-avoidance strategies

In order to understand the content and design of the consolidation policy con-ducted in France, we take into account the overlap between economic and admin-istrative viabilities, international interdependencies, and blame-avoidancestrategies.

The formulation of an economic and budgetary response: Viabilities andinternational constraints

Our exploration of the decision-making process at work in retrenchment policy hasshown the importance of the nature of the stimuli and the magnitude of the crisissignals experienced, perceived and interpreted by the decision-makers in a contextof great interdependencies between the countries.

The pros of being ‘one of the cleanest dirty shirts in the Eurozone’. The characteristics ofFrance’s economy, with the highest level of public spending as a proportion ofGDP (56%) and the biggest balance-of-trade deficit in the Eurozone, tempered theimpact of the 2008 crisis and did not prompt any drastic questioning of budgetarypolicy.

Less dependent on global trade, the dip in GDP was much less marked in Francethan in other countries. Whereas some countries were used to running budgetsurpluses and suddenly had to deal with substantial deficits, France’s financeshad been in disrepair before the 2008 crisis. At the heart of the crisis, therefore,the change appeared less sudden: the overall government deficit increased onlyslightly in 2009 and 2010, largely sustained by the operation of the big automaticstabilizers.

The bail-out plan for the French banks used less public money than in someother countries since state action was essentially limited to providing a guarantee toenable the banks to borrow (Cour des comptes, 2013: 155–190). The bail-out planeven generated additional state revenues from 2009 onwards.

The scale of variation in the economic and budgetary situation was smaller inFrance than in many other EU countries. France’s political decision-makers wereeven less inclined to dramatize the situation in that they had four further reasonsfor continued confidence. First, the international markets remained confident anddid not seem alarmed by the continuing widening in France’s trade deficit since2001 and the steady increase in the country’s public debt since the late 1970s.Second, French debt was characterized by a high degree of liquidity: it was very

easy to buy or sell French government bonds. For this reason, France was con-sidered as the ‘second-best choice’ in the Eurozone, behind Germany. Third, des-pite its negative impact on the public finances and growth, population ageing inFrance was less marked than in other countries. With less exposure to futuredemographic shock (European Commission, 2012: 35), France’s leaders did notfeel the same degree of urgency about undertaking large-scale consolidation. Infact, these three factors combined to legitimize the choice of gradual, low-keyefforts without radical structural reform. Last, but not least, France continued toreceive the same AAA rating as Germany until 1 January 2012. The deteriorationin France’s credit began late, on 13 January 2012, with the decision of Standard &Poor’s agency to withdraw the country’s AAA rating.

However, France also benefited directly from the collapse of the economies ofmany Southern European countries. The acuteness of the sovereign debt crisis in itsSouthern neighbours led the financial markets to look more favourably on France’scircumstances. In the words of a popular rating agency joke, France continued tobe seen as ‘one of the cleanest dirty shirts in the Eurozone’. The positive attitude ofthe rating agencies was probably self-fulfilling: while French ratings remainedexcellent, French interests rates were held down, which relieved the governmentof the need to undertake rapid consolidation. Against a background of sovereigndebt crisis marked by a sharp rise in the perceived risks of the debts of SouthernEuropean countries and by a massive withdrawal of capital from those countries,France looked like an attractive investment target. The simultaneous and globalnature of the crisis in other countries reduced the cost of the debt burden on theFrench state, despite the very fast increase of its debt stocks.

The cons of being ‘one of the cleanest dirty shirts in the Eurozone’. Nonetheless, officials inthe Finance Ministry and politicians could clearly see that while France was betteroff than the Southern European countries, the comparison with Germany becamenegative from 2009. France was hit hard by the sovereign debt crisis in 2011, with a14% increase in debt-servicing costs (see Table 2), exacerbating the risk of a budgetfailure.

Bond yield spreads compared with Germany showed their first clear divergencein 2009 before peaking at 1.5% in mid-2011. As one of the players belonging to theTreasury Department recalls:

even though in reality it was nothing like as bad as what was happening in Spain or in

Greece, the markets sent a signal with the spread differential Germany was paying.. . .

For political reasons, France had to remain at the controls with Germany, and

Sarkozy was obsessed with parity with Germany .. . . He wanted France to remain

in the co-pilot’s seat in the management of the crisis.

A budget risk together with the risk of a loss of political credit prompted theexecutive to adopt more drastic retrenchment measures than it had previouslyimplemented. That is why the second planning act for 2011–2014 marked a clear

change in budgetary policy, with the objective of containing public spendinggrowth at an average of 0.8% over the period (excluding the stimulus package).The credibility of the classical argument advanced by budget mandarins, stressingthe possibility of a ‘budgetary accident’, received a strong boost with the Greekcrisis and was reinforced in July 2011 by the spread of the sovereign debt crisis toItaly (France being perceived as the next domino likely to fall after Italy).

The main constraint on France came from Germany’s demands at the time of theadoption of the European Financial Stability Facility in 2010 and the EuropeanStability Mechanism in 2012. The solutions devised to tackle the euro crisis rein-forced the centralization of decision-making power to the European level. When EUmechanisms were adopted to rescue countries with fast-rising interest rates, thecontributing countries obtained the adoption of rules preventing ‘excessive publicdeficits’ and institutional mechanisms designed to prevent further crises. The FiscalCompact and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance of 2 March2012 forced member states to transpose the ‘balanced budget rule’ into their nationallegal systems through restrictive provisions. By laying down the principle of budgetbalance or surplus in public administrations and by setting a 0.5% ceiling on thepermitted structural deficit (adjusted to take account of economic variations) as the‘medium-term objective’ that every country had to meet, the European treatiesstrengthened controls over the behaviour of national politicians and diminishedtheir discretionary powers for the future. The solidarity mechanisms came at theprice of increased European central control over national budgetary policies.

However, France only partly played the game, giving the High Council of PublicFinances a narrower remit than that assigned to most of its counterparts (Pisani-Ferry, 2014: 118). France’s influence enabled it to manipulate the European rules inits favour in order to soften the fiscal discipline advocated by Germany and toavoid excessive policy restrictions (for a view on this repeated strategy, seeHowarth, 2007). As Clift (2013: 22) observed:

the structural balance target differs in important respects from the public deficit in the

Maastricht sense in taking more account of the economic cycle and – in theory at

least – allowing for counter-cyclical fiscal policy . . .. The way fiscal rules are incorpo-

rated into the Fiscal Compact might seem to reflect a more ‘French’ than ‘German’

understanding of fiscal policy, economic activity and growth . . .. The focus on struc-

tural, as opposed to cyclical components of budget deficits within the new EU and

Table 2. Evolution of the debt service costs in France since 2007 (in millions of euros).

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

2014

(LFI)

2014

(PLFR)

Total debt –

excluding swaps

39,550 44,464 37,625 40,503 46,256 46,303 44,886 46,654 44,854

Trend n + 1 – +12% –15% +7% +14% 0% –3% +4% 0%

Notes: LFI – Initial Budget Bill; PLFR – Amending Draft Budget Bill.

National frameworks means that how potential growth rates and output gaps are

defined are now of first order political significance.

According to some economists, these rules led to an underestimation of the outputgap, the scale of the structural deficit and the extent of the public spending cutsrequired (Artus, 2013).

Concentration of political power as a two-edged sword in a context ofpolitical polarization

Our description of the decision-making process challenges the usual politicalscience assumption that unitary states with single-party governments in semi-pre-sidential regimes are more capable of taking swift and drastic decisions (Elgie andMcMenamin, 2008) and supports explanations in terms of the concentration ofblame. By concentrating power, the Fifth Republic’s institutional model also con-centrates responsibilities and therefore, paradoxically, encourages a flight fromresponsibility when difficult or electorally expensive decisions have to be taken(Pierson, 1994). From that point of view, our findings are in line with modelswhich predict that increasing political polarization increases debt accumulation(Alesina and Tabellini, 1990; Alt and Lassen, 2006).

The first illustration is that political advocacy of retrenchment policies is con-sidered very costly in the French system. In 2007, when the five-year term beganwith a relaxation of budgetary constraints (Clift, 2012a), Prime Minister Fillon’sspeech, in which he declared that he was in charge of a ‘bankrupt state’, wasdisowned by the president. Later, in 2009, far from taking advantage of thecrisis to justify a liberal policy of retrenchment, in keeping with his personal pref-erences, President Sarkozy instead adopted the role of resolute defender of theFrench welfare state model, deliberately playing up the contrast between himselfand leaders of countries forced into austerity measures. This posture as guarantorof the French welfare model was in tune with opinion polls. President Sarkozyfirmly believed that he would be punished by the electorate if he decided to imple-ment a drastic fiscal adjustment.

The second illustration is the influence of the electoral cycle on the fiscal time-table. To a significant degree, the electoral time frames were unfavourable to Frenchgovernment action on both the upstream and downstream sides. On the upstreamside, the crisis hit in 2008 when President Sarkozy had already put together andlaunched his main reforms. The result was a significant level of policy dependencythat prevented the government modifying its initial formulation, especially as theinitial RGPP included the objective of deficit-cutting. On the downstream side, witha mandate set to end in May 2012, the electoral timetable gave the executive noincentive to adopt drastic consolidation measures immediately after the recoveryplan. The importance of the electoral cycle explains why the implementation ofmany consolidation measures was postponed until after the 2012 elections.Whoever was in power after this would be responsible for implementing the most

important consolidation measures. From March 2010 onwards, the apparent inter-national consensus in favour of the adoption of stimulus measures was clearlyfading, with the emergence of the sovereign debt crisis revealed by Greece’s situ-ation. The onset of the pre-electoral phase increased the risk of electoral punishmentassociated with retrenchment measures, and conversely constituted an incentive todeferring the budget adjustments until after the election. Caught between the risk oflosing its AAA credit rating – which would demand the adoption of strong revenueand spending measures – and an electoral timetable that gave it no incentive forimmediate action, the government sought primarily to manage these tensions byintensifying its use of decrementally applied ‘low-profile’ instruments. The govern-ment resorted to the well-tried technique of formulating its budget strategy aroundgrowth estimates grounded in deliberately optimistic hypotheses and chronic under-budgeting for certain lines (OECD, 2011).

Conclusion

What has happened since the elections of May 2012 can be seen as a confirmationof the diagnosis reached on the difficulties of the French executive – whetherheaded by a president of the Right or the Left – in achieving sustainable publicfinances. The scale of the fiscal consolidation measures adopted after the presiden-tial elections first showed more obviously the extent to which budgetary adjustmenthad been deferred during the previous phase. Despite the campaign promises madeby Francois Hollande, such as the repeal of measures like the VAT increase, theexecutive had no choice but to ratify and even reinforce the fiscal measures previ-ously introduced. The effects have been recessionary. Due to the tendency to theconcentration of power specific to the Fifth Republic, as outlined earlier, the presi-dent is seen as accountable for this cutback policy and is facing a dip in politicaland social support, as well as ever-growing corporatist opposition, linked both toits fiscal policy and to its attempts to liberalize certain economic sectors.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the reviewers of the IRAS for their very helpful commentsas well as Pepper Culpepper for his insightful remarks on a previous version of this article.We also thank Vanessa Albert for her research assistance in this project.

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’sSeventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 266887 (Project COCOPS),Socio-economic Sciences & Humanities.

Notes

1. This policy was extended and reinforced following the crisis, with 150,000 public servicejobs being eliminated between 2008 and 2012 (IGA et al., 2012).

2. The balance of trade, in continuous decline since the creation of the Eurozone because ofa lack of competitiveness in the non-military industrial sectors, turned negative in 2003,switching directly from +0.6 to –4 billion euros. In 2007, the trade deficit rose to E53

billion, even before the start of the crisis.3. French public spending grew faster than GDP: over the period 2004–2008, the gap

between France’s and Germany’s public debt-to-GDP ratios was five points.

4. Quoted in Le Figaro, 2 July 2010.5. French pensions accounted for 13.3%ofGDP in 2009, the highest rate amongOrganisation

for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD) countries, just behind Italy (before

its reforms). The 2010 reform in France provided for a gradual increase in the minimumpension age from 60 to 62 by 2017, depending on the year of birth, and an increase in the fullpension age from 65 to 67 between 2016 and 2022. The contribution rates of civil servantswould rise gradually from 7.85% to 10.55% by 2020.

6. Health insurance spending in the basic social security systems accounted for 16% of totalpublic spending in 2010, that is, 9% of GDP.

7. The decree implementing the increase in the VAT rate was published in the Official

Journal the same day as the second round of the presidential election.

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Philippe Bezes is Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) ResearchProfessor in Political Science at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches de SciencesAdministratives et Politiques (CERSA), France. His academic interests are admin-istrative reforms and bureaucracies in France and in comparative perspective, staterestructuring, institutional change and public policy. He is preparing a co-editedvolume (with Steven van de Walle, Gerhard Hammerschmid and Rhys Andrews)entitled Public Administration Reforms in Europe: The View from the Top (EdwardElgar, forthcoming in 2015) from the European project COCOPS (Coordinatingfor Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future) examining the effects of NewPublic Management (NPM) reforms in European countries.

Patrick Le Lidec is a political scientist and senior Centre National de la RechercheScientifique (CNRS) Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies atSciences Po, France. His main research interests are decentralization policies,local government reforms and territorial restructuring in comparative perspective,including such items as national trajectories of territorial reforms, multi-level andmetropolitan governance, the sociology of public finance, and the sociology ofpolitical work. He recently published ‘Decentralisation and territorial reforms in

France: How constitutional constraints impact strategies for reform’, in ArthurBenz and Felix Knupling (eds) Changing Federal Constitutions. Lessons fromInternational Comparison (Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2012) and co-edited(with Didier Demaziere) Les mondes du travail politique: Les elus et leurs entourages(Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014).